Charns Law Office

by Alex Charns (copyright 2007 Charns & Charns)

What does a law enforcement disaster look like? Read the Durham Police/City Manager report on the Duke lacrosse investigation to find out.

The twelve page sham wrapped in a whitewash, basted in denial, doesn't even mention that a Durham police corporal offered money for anonymous tips to prove that a "horrific" "gang-rape" had occurred. He didn't make the pretense of saying "alleged crime".

This verdict first, proof later, Bull City justice has thrived in Durham for the past year. Based on the recent report, things are going to stay this way. To quote Jefferson Airplane riffing on that girl in Wonderland, "Go ask Alice, I think she'll know."

Last May, on behalf of one of the unindicted Duke lacrosse players, I wrote to Durham City Manager Patrick Baker asking for an investigation into this police e-mail and poster on Durham Police letterhead that was distributed to thousands of people by list-servers and to the media. It claimed: "The Duke Lacrosse Team was hosting a party" where the "victim was sodomized, raped, assaulted and robbed. This horrific crime sent shock waves throughout our community."

This poster was handed out by at least one police officer in the neighborhood where lacrosse players lived. It fanned the flames of racial division and perpetuated a lie. No wonder some in Durham don't believe the Attorney General's clear statement that the players are innocent.

City officials told me no investigation was necessary. The matter had been taken care of. I asked that the city make public any inquiry it had made into this matter. Mr. Baker said he'd get back to me about that.

In the not so distant past, Durham police officers wiretapped their own African-American employees who they falsely accused of running a "call-girl ring" out of police headquarters. Durham officers forged the signature of an assistant district attorney using a copy machine on subpoenas for private telephone records. The city spent about half a million dollars denying wrongdoing in court, only to ultimately settle the cases after a federal appeals court ruled against them.

In another case, Internal Affairs engaged in a cover-up to hide the fact that two African-American sisters where brutalized by officers. Almost $300,000 was paid to these women and the former city manager apologized. The day the check was delivered to the victims, the city manager trumpeted to the press that the officers had done nothing wrong. "So it goes," Vonnegut would say.

I'm still waiting for a real apology, a real investigation and real leadership.

(*A much shorter version appeared in the newspaper May 16, 2007. On June 1, 2007, the Durham City Council voted to set up an independent panel to investigate, but then reversed course when it was clear they were going to be sued.)

N.C. ATTORNEY GENERAL: DUKE LAX THREE ARE "INNOCENT". April 11, 2007. All charges are dropped.

DUKE LACROSSE: 43 CERTIFIED NOT GUILTY

by Alex Charns (copyright 2006 by Charns & Charns)

Imagine this front-page headline: "DA Clears 43 Duke lacrosse players of gang rape cover-up". Keep imagining.

A false allegation lasts forever. Exoneration is fleeting and often hidden from view. The falsehood gets front-page news and vivid photos splashed on the television news. Innocence comes inside the newspaper, after the cut line on page 14A, and not at all on TV.

So it was last week with the Duke University lacrosse-stripper-student mom-alleged gang rape scandal in this former tobacco town, a city where I practice law, raise my children, and where my kids and I play one of those so-called "helmet sports".

Last week, my client and 42 other Duke lacrosse players were cleared of criminal wrongdoing by the Durham County District Attorney. It was a backhanded apology for earlier accusations of cover-up and stonewalling that he had made against them.

DA Mike Nifong wrote in a press release: "At the outset of this investigation, I said that it was just as important to remove the cloud of suspicion from the members of the Duke University lacrosse team who were not involved in this assault as it was to identify the actual perpetrators."

"For that reason, I believe it is important to state publicly today that none of the evidence that we have developed implicates any member of that team other than those three against whom indictments have been returned."

As welcome as this press release was, it can't overcome the earlier, repeated, nationally publicized statements accusing the players of "covering up for a bunch of hooligans."

And what of the Durham Police crime posters pasted around town accusing the guys of covering up a known, not alleged, gang rape and sodomy? The same Durham Police Department who wiretapped its own employees in years past due to a fictitious "call-girl ring" and spent close to a million dollars litigating instead of apologizing has offered only silence.

Neither have the sports pundits apologized after blaming the "helmet sport" gang mentality for the "code of silence" and maligning all who play lacrosse, hockey and football.

The three young men charged will have their day in court, and will clear their names in a public and highly publicized trial. Their 43 teammates, falsely accused without being formally charged with anything, received a one-sentence exoneration buried inside the newspaper.

-Alex Charns, a partner in Charns & Charns, is author of "How Hockey Saved the World". An edited version of this op-ed essay appeared in the Raleigh, NC News & Observer on May 25, 2006.